Take Back Our Town: The Transient Problem and One Group’s Solutions

“Just hungry,” reads the sign in front of the travelers from Oklahoma. “Divine Origin,” reads the sign in back. For various reasons these travelers and others, trimmigrants (migrant marijuana labor), and homeless come to Humboldt County.

However, divine origin or not, local residents are still feeling increasingly frustrated by the stress put on their community by the large numbers of people sitting on their sidewalks and camping nearby.

A popular new sign reads, “No work here keep moving.”A number of locals from the Garberville/Redway area have formed a group to “Take Back Our Town.” Sisters Tara and Melissa Sutherland have been a driving force behind the movement.

Travelers sitting on the sidewalk in front of a store with their dogs.

“There has just been a lot of things going wrong,” she said in frustration. “In the middle of daylight, there was some guy masturbating, other people smoking pot right there on the sidewalks, blocking the sidewalks, [and] their dogs not being on leashes.”

Business owners have expressed concern that tourists would not want to stop in the small community if they saw the large numbers of folks wearing backpacks and the trash the travelers often leave behind.

Tara Sutherland said she wanted to “make ourselves and our friends safe in the town again” so she and her sister as well as others organized a meeting last week. At the meeting, several goals were decided on.

First, there would be a town patrol with an emphasis on walking the streets as students get off the school bus to make sure the children feel comfortable as they head home.

Melissa Sutherland explained, “What we’re trying to do right now is make our community safe again to walk to the bus.”

Another goal, Tara Sutherland said, was to get sheriff’s deputies to enforce the law that “all dogs must have leashes and proof of rabies shots.”

Homeless encampment outside of Redway.

In addition, the hope is to get video surveillance on the front of more stores, possibly by holding fundraisers to help business owners purchase the needed equipment.

Further, the Sutherlands say, they “want a crew to go to encampments.” The group wants to evict those in the camps around town and clear away the trash. They say they have received permission from some of the landowners. “We’re willing to pay to get the trash off the property,” explained Melissa.

In addition, the Sutherlands say they want to warn trimmigrants that working in the hills with employers they don’t know could be unsafe. Melissa said that marijuana manicurists should “know what you are doing and who you working for.” She pointed to a pamphlet by a Southern Humboldt group called CHILL that encouraged trimmer safety saying, “I think it is a good start. We’re thinking about doing something similarly….We want people to know the risk they take.”

Homeless woman with neck brace and white cane pushing a shopping cart loaded with her belongings through town.

Homeless advocate Debra Carey is worried the Take Back Our Town group could escalate the tensions between the homed and the un-homed. She recognizes that adding large numbers of trimmigrants to the already large number of homeless is problematic. “I don’t think the front of Rays [grocery store] should be the employment office,” she explained. “That is where everyone goes and that is uncomfortable to the community.”

Nonetheless, she said, the rising tensions could lead to violence. Some homeless and trimmigrants have been shot with paintballs. In fact, she says, because she is a homeless advocate, her vehicle has been targeted. When the numbers of trimmigrants rise during harvest season, the community traditionally gets very frustrated. “At this time of year people get ready to be violent,” she said. In an apparent reference to a previous time of high tension between the residents and the transients when local youths killed a homeless man, she said, “It scares me that our youth will be the ones that will make the big mistakes.”

However, the Sutherland sisters say they don’t want violence. “We are trying to make changes peacefully,” said Melissa Sutherland. “We are not trying to enact vigilante justice. We don’t want to see anybody get hurt.”

Over the weekend the Take Our Town Back group discovered a photo of a crumpled flyer that was on the internet. It showed a pair clippers and asked for trimmers to show up at the Ray’s grocery store in Garberville where a “50 seat capacity bus” would be waiting to pick people up for a job.

In response, Tara Sutherland said about 25 members of her group met early in the morning in front of the store. “There was a bunch of transients,” Tara said. However, no bus showed up. “A couple of them had basically asked us about it,” she said. She thinks that a lookout car was scared away by her group.

There was a confrontation eventually. Tara Sutherland said that four or five transients were in the walkway. “Where they were sitting, there was a bunch of trash,” she said. Tara said her group asked them to “respect our town–our streets.” But, she said, “[o]ne pulled out a pipe getting ready to smoke. One of my friends asked him not to smoke pot on our streets.”

According to Tara Sutherland, “One of them began yelling and basically freaking out. The two cops that were on duty showed up. And basically told them that we were concerned citizens, that we had the right to demand respect for our town. They told the officer they didn’t want to be there anymore anyway. Basically, we picked up their garbage. There was a lot of people who were extremely respectful about it. I think it helped out.”

Homeless man and dog on Garberville’s town square.

On Friday, the group plans to begin town patrol. “[We’ll start the walk through when the kids come off the bus. We’ll try to get people there around 2:30.”

“We’re not going out with pitchforks and guns and axes and knives,” Tara said. “We’re going to ask people to not block sidewalks, keep dog feces off the sidewalk, stop smoking where it goes into businesses and tell them doing drugs [on the streets] is not okay.”

She says the group will call the sheriff if people don’t comply with their requests. “We’ll walk away. Document it. We’re not trying to get in any altercation.”

“What we’re trying to do right now is make our community safe again to walk to the bus,” said Melissa. “It is not okay to have a festival-like atmosphere in our town.”

After Monday’s incident (and a clean-up by the ERCP on Sunday) local resident Andrea Boldt wrote on Facebook, “I went to town [Tuesday] and WOW!!! town was so different. It didn’t have that toxic energy and no loitering people!!! It reminded me like back in the 1980’s. Thank you for letting me have a wonderful experience today with your positive energy for the town we all Love.”

In front of Ray’s grocery store on Monday morning after the Take Back Our Town group patroled.

If anyone is interested in learning more about the Take Back Our Town group, there will be a meeting at Amelia’s tonight at 6 p.m.

108 comments

CHILL isn’t an utter failure. You fail to see the good they are doing for people who have got a lot less than you have and you don’t care. CHILL makes a difference in lives that you consider worthless. CHILL makes a difference in the individual lives out there.

CHILL is the worst organization to ever form in our area, ever.
All spikes in crime directly associated with the influx of “transiets, bums, trimigrants” can be directly contributed to CHILL’s efforts to diminish the quality of life for “housed” residence of Southern Humboldt.
They have a massive predjuduce towards anyone who wants to live a modest life style, work and pay their taxes.
It’s utterly mind blowing.

There needs to be a public audit conducted on their organizations finances to see where the contributions have been going and where their sourcing the funds come from.
It’s time for the enabling behaviors to be held accountable and the war waged on hard working residents/business owners to end now!

CHILL IS a total failure. If you want a job go somewhere else. There are many local families that could benefit from the work that is farmed out to transient dirt bags. It’s like outsourcing to China. Cheap labor for greedy assholes. Don’t think for a second that any real so hum local is an advocate of CHILL.

Stop using Chill as the scape goat! The problems SoHum are experiencing originate from several factors including failure of our leadership to create a healthy balanced economy!! Remember their are other non profits that have already been doing outreach for years. The Sheriff’s Department has failed some of these organizations and failed to follow their fiduciary duty to implement mandated services regarding public safety and services.

Please explain how you create a “balanced economy”?
Socialism??!
Lol, you’re so High.
Some people are smart, some people are dumb – some people work hard, some people are lazy.
We are not all created equal.
Capitalism is fair and balanced, it allows everyone to know and have a place in life.
That’s what you call balance.

While I applaud the community’s efforts in cleaning up the trash in the illegal campgrounds, I don’t see how this will effect change in their behaviour…if anything, their behaviour is being rewarded by what is effectively room service. You might as well leave a chocolate mint on every sleeping bag you find. Hypothetically speaking, it might be more effective to let the trash pile up to the point where even the transients wouldn’t want to stay there anymore. Of course I’m not advocating this but merely wanted to point out that picking up the trash is only dealing with the symptoms and not the root cause. Until the root cause is dealt with, there will be no end to the trash cycle.

I agree.
If the trash and human waste is left in place, human services will be called in to asses the situation.
Once that happens the land owners who are not managing their properties responsibly and esentually perpetuating this problem will be held accountable on a financial level.
Land owners will realize it will be more cost effective to implement preventive measures than pay costly County fees and fines.
It’s a horrible plan of action but something needs to happen to move this problem down the road.
It’s quite clear the town majority does not support this behavior and the enablers are losing hard.

I appreciate your foresight, but I think the outcome of that will be to line the businesses’ fronts with chain-link shutters like San Francisco. The problem was not solved. There’s got to be a better, different way. We just have to think this through…
But hat’s off to the efforts currently being made by all of those who are making them.

Interesting point of view. Put the responsibility on the land owners? It seems to me that they are the biggest victims in this scenario. I doubt any of them approve of the homeless/trash/destruction of their land but do not have the resources to prevent the problem. You would now further punish them financially? What would you have them do? The one incidence of a long time local putting up fencing to protect their investment from the homeless living on their land (the property next to the Liquor store in Redway) was met with scorn and harassment from a surprising large number of people. So no fencing…should they chase people out? The police are doing their best to do so but where do they go when chased out? Into doorways of local businesses and backyards of residences. Or just right back to where they were…. Got any other ideas for them?

Let’s face the facts, this is a pot economy bi-product that has gotten out of control because our pot economy has as well. Let’s clean up our act and maybe we can clean up our town. My utmost respect to the Sutherland sisters for taking on a monumental problem that we all have to live with.

I’m thiilled to see this. I don’t know whats happening but we are paying for it the grocery prices are double the price than anywhere else. charge more for unsafe place but it is getting worse, I can’t even go puts flowers on my family graves because they are over there.

Learn from Eureka take care of the problem now before it really gets out of hand and watch out ladies and gents they will start to rape,pilage and plunder your houses,stores and you when you start standing your ground.

I am almost certain that there are no leash laws in unincorporated Humboldt county, period. Only cities with their own penal codes have leash laws. So in that sense aren’t they asking the Sheriff to do something they aren’t empowered to do? Time to form a city if they’d like to see leashed dogs be mandatory.

There’s also open carry laws with the option to shoot troubled dogs on the spot.
Those laws apply here as well, should we draw the moral line at blowing dogs brains out just because it’s legal?.. Probably not.
I like your attempt at focusing on a victim loophole argument, fortunately, regardless of the loose regulation of a un-incorporated area, we should all remain civil.

The dog laws are more strict in unincorporated areas because of wild life and farm animals. All dogs must have a visible license, all dogs must be on a leash or contained, exception are dog parks. A female dog in heat can not be loose at any time. I have tried to post this with links to the dog laws of California but this web page wouldn’t allow. But, you can google it and see for yourself.

I’ve tried everywhere to buy a leash law sign. You would think animal control could tell you where to get one, but noooooo.
The only one I’ve seen is near the Covolo exit on hwy 101 put up by the County.

EUREKA,this is what we need to do!!!all of our bitching and complaining doesn’t help .but a solution will.patrol our streets at night not 2 cops but 20 everywhere every night,run em out We don’t want u here go back where u came from every night till they don’t come back.Good job

El paso has pack of 6,4,BP,at night,diodes inches above sidewalk,on mountain bikes,quietly,on sidewalk alleys and dirt.second safest city in us.el paso,Juarez most dangerous in world.justice of the bat.terrifying spun,bully,or small time thief.

I went through Garberville Monday about 10am. It did look like it had less beggars and less animals. I didn’t see any large groups sitting around. The best was seeing a mother and toddler walking by Rays and she looked comfortable and safe. I never could figure out why Ray’s and neighboring businesses didn’t hire a security guard to keep their parking lot cleared of transients.

This is what has been needed for a long time and is way past due. The Sheriff should have had his deputies doing this themselves and now they need to join up and clean it up and assign more people there A.S.A.P. These transients need to be first told to leave and then arrested for trespass on any property they are on without permission. Change is in the air and crime camps and vagrants should hit the road.

Hmmm I think picking up trash is just a part of it. Mainly letting folks on the streets know enough locals are sick of their behavior for 25 folks to show up. At least thats what I got out of this article. Letting trash build up works to keep yuppies out but not usually street folks. Plus the environmental impacts of trash build up are huge. Especially close to the river or in creeks flowing to river.
Thank you to these amazing ladies and all involved! I remember when kids could walk all over town safely. I commend the effort to make it that way again, & the patience it takes to remain non-violent in the face of obnoxious pretentious jackass like most street folk are.

I just met a woman down in the Santa Rosa area that told me she and her husband have vacationed in and around Garberville for years, but that of late they noticed how much it had changed, and so very much not for the better. This makes me so sad. Every person has a place on this earth, but every person has the responsibility to conduct themselves with decency. Somehow these folks haven’t learned yet what decent civil behavior is. Kudos to those who are pointing it out to them. Of course, many of them will probably take it too personally to be told to not stand in the middle of the sidewalk sending out nasty clouds of smoke that mothers and children have to navigate, etc., etc., etc., but it still must be said. I hope tempers don’t get in the way of ‘taking our town back’. Thank you for your effort.

Why is it that the rest of the coastal california towns have been successful at sending these druggie scum packing? Anyone hiring dirty drug addict hobos is adding to our problems. Feeding the pigeons only brings more pigeons. Be professional hire only clean drug free referenced workers. Let us take back our county. Send the scum packing

the pot scene brings them here it only seems reasonable to get rid of what they are coming for and most of them will go away people want it both ways to grow weed and live in utopia sorry it dont work that way ,nice try and good luck with that

Why blame the Trimmigrants for being Trimmigrants? They are here because 2nd generation SoHum growers got greedy and blew up the mom’n pop, just enough to get by, illicit cannabis grows. In doing attracted attention, which brought in the Green Rush growers.

It is really unfair for the trimmers and trimmigrants to have to work under the conditions that they do. Even in the best circumstances, the trimmers and trimmigrants have no recourse if they are injured on the job, as there is no oversight or regulation on illicit commercial cannabis production. In the worst circumstances, they are abused, not paid and even killed and buried … if you don’t believe that happens then you are naive. Black market cannabis growers are scum because of how they skirt laws that protect not only the consumers of their product but the laws that protect their (under the table) paid employees.

Funny, this community pressured the authorities look the other way with regard to the federal law of illegal grow enterprises for rich producers, but now want them to enforce misdemeanor laws on poor people caused by the same illegal enterprise. Nothing ever changes, the rich and corrupt win, the poor looses.

Years ago 02,03,04, we had a kooler less invasive trimmigrant they used to be more respectful. I never had a car when I lived in Alderpoint for two years but I never would of camped in Garberville for months if I didn’t have a job. That was some backbreaking work too 13-14 hours a day 6 days a week for roughly 6-7 months. I don’t think many homeless can work like that or want to. I look back on myself like hmm why did I work so hard for so little ohhh yeah now I remember the donkey and the carrot. I doubt many of the street kids get much work and as for locals wanting to work sometime yes sometime no. I have heard every excuse on the planet for why my construction business should be flexible to their party schedule haha but it’s not easy to find reliable good workers. The cost of living is high very little housing and the pay is moderate at best. I pay 160$ the last guy that helped me I paid 200$ a day for ten days. It’s hard to find locals that will do insulation or crawl under houses I do it myself mostly.

How did the meeting go last night? When is the next one? Kym, we would love to keep updated with this amazing, brave, proactive group. My family has lived here for more than 40 years and we are all saddened by the situation in town. We are not against “trimmigrants”, we are simply against people hanging out on the sidewalks, trashing and disrespecting the town. Trimmers should come when they are invited by growers, or friends. Then they would have a place to stay and not be hanging out aimlessly, literally shitting all over our community. These people have reached a disgusting critical mass, and change is in the air.

Regulation will work all these bugs out, however, it will take a few years. Until then we need to stand by our values.
We value being self sufficient, being proud, being respectful, being helpful, honest and hard working. Most of all, being from Southen Humboldt.
Other folks just don’t understand.
The lazy worthless entitled are trying to break our moral by waging a war of guilt and lies. Every one of them have some bull shit victim story. Well guess what Bums?
You don’t have what it takes to be part of this town and we don’t want you! There’s no room, we sure aren’t making more for some worthless scum.
If we’re going to turn this town around for the better, we’re going to need a lot of help from good hard working people.
Not the social rejects that are pissing and shitting in our woods asking for hand outs.

I admit, I usually only show up in Garberville and contribute maybe an average of $150 dollars a year to your economy, but last time I was there I really didn’t like all the grubby and boisterous young people capering around and using foul language — EVEN though I cuss with the best of ’em — and their pit bulls I had to navigate to get to the diner from my car and back to my car from the diner.

Inside the diner they had to boot out three street people while I ate my meal. If not for a really nice conversation with the guy next to me at the counter, I would’ve really hated that visit.

This “Divine Origins” business has NOTHING to do with trimmigrants. And the seething transients in the street in the middle of the day are obviously not working, and more likely to be general citizens of the national movement toward transience as a lifestyle… and only SOME of them go where there are temporary jobs and only some of them actually work the jobs.

The street problem is NOT mainly trimmigrants… or not hired ones. They’re kids keeping the party going. It’s a thing. I’ve read and listened about it a few places on the internet. They’re big on Portland too.

It seems to me extremely fair for Garberville to provide more nearby and clean PAY camping grounds where actual trimmigrants will get the classic ranger lesson about what black bears do to raid food, and have a safer area to keep their tents and belongings while they’re working. Less likely to get killed and buried in lieu of pay and more likely to be able to feed themselves at a nightly cookout in camp.

I don’t know anything about CHILL and insofar as they can help the locals who’ve gotten in scrapes, cool, but if they’re just there to keep the Divine Origin excuse for being jobless and panhandling wherever they land, that really might be a good-enough-sounding excuse for generating really great paychecks for themselves while facilitating this mess in your town, so, yeah, pore over those books and make CERTAIN they’re not just making your, and my, and tourists’, lives worse by the way they do their work.

The towns on the Mendocino Coast aren’t full of these people because they boot them out post haste. They are known to drive them to Sacramento instead of throwing them in jail, but they don’t put up with this for long. Even the village of Mendocino, full of upscale shops and tourist traps, makes these kids disappear almost before they are seen… BECAUSE they ruin businesses.

Garberville could be the same. Full of restaurants and motels and gas stations and fun shops and art galleries and farm supply and, out here, that IS a diversified economy, one that can be clean and happy and welcoming AND not put up with this nonsense that really IS driving businesses and customers away. It seems very likely to me that bigger fish are dissuading the sheriff from helping you get rid of the shiftless transients. NO problem getting their help down in Mendo World.

AND, if you don’t like the way CHILL does things, make sure they only facilitate wanted seasonal workers’ lodging and help LOCAL homeless into decent situations and put the GenX Transient Trendies who are PURPOSELY “at risk” on busses back home… WITH the full co-operation of the Sheriff.

Cops can send out massive convoys to scenes way the heck out in the hills with despicable regularity, but NOT send in a convoy to clear these brats from your village streets, or oversee loading them on busses home?

It doesn’t matter if bragging about your pot industry attracted them. It doesn’t matter if some have worked to get the sheriff to look the other way on certain things. The sheriff’s first duty is to YOU, Not some stupid regs written into the books by some clerk in Sacramento or DC without even a vote. HIS job is to make sure that the peace is upheld for the benefit of the locals and insure they can safely engage in their businesses. The voters of California mandated he could not make medical marijuana busts. Seems to me most people want him to bust the monster grows that are ruining the ecology, but those are mostly trespass grows, no?

Instead, they’re targeting larger grows on private property, with or without their medical tags, because that means they get civil forfeiture money out of it. So they can AFFORD to help you clean up this mess… AND who owns Hippie Hill? WHY no complaints to the sheriffs from the owner?

I love that these women have decided to do something about the menace to the children in town, but way more needs doing, including delegations to the sheriff’s office to INSIST that, regs or no regs, no loitering vagrants with menacing dogs on or off leashes and Hutu machete’s hanging off their belts be allowed to sprawl in doorways on the street or mill around parking spaces and crosswalks making visitors uncomfortable.

Just because dope growing solved the problem of so many loggers and mill workers being laid off, doesn’t mean that has to CAUSE the problem of everybody in the whole area being pushed out once their children are threatened by drugs, and homes and businesses devalued by crime and vagrancy, and mountains of garbage for the MILLIONAIRES AND BILLIONAIRES who want your town for themselves… to “gentrify”. They too WILL grow pot and WILL keep rabble off the street and WILL put in all manner of EXPENSIVE shops and resorts. And you WILL be gone. EVEN if you could hold on. You won’t be able to afford it long.

There will be minimum wage jobs for you, but you will have to commute to them from a slum in Eureka… or, if you’re extremely lucky, get your annual property taxes covered by trimming for them every autumn.

If you want Garberville to go back to being the lovely little town and happy pitstop for vacationers, you will MAKE the sheriff understand he’s not JUST there to please the monied interests, that Garberville doesn’t have to incorporate and create a whole new governmental mess JUST to maintain a safe environment and magnificent rural character.

Growing dope is NOT illegal anymore. You are NOT criminals. The sheriff has the power to refuse access to the feds, but most of the sheriffs in California who were doing that got election-frauded out of office. DEMAND your sheriff take that chance. He’s there because of YOU, not the fascist gentrifiers who are taking over everything.

You’re cruising for a Garberville where the local Burger King or Taco Bell franchise holders will be trading years as president of the local Rotary Chapter… and you’ll NEED them so the minimum wage employees can eat some food-flavored plastic to keep from fainting on the job.

Plus, if you stopped letting the sheriff take donations from rich people, which I can’t believe is legal, EVEN if not a direct payoff, you might be able to get him to represent everybody again. COPS DON’T NEED TO BE EVERYBODY’S ENEMIES ANYMORE.

They’re NOT meant to be merely the enforcers for the rich. They’re just scared of what will happen to them if they stop. If we stand behind them, maybe they’ll get the courage back to go back to being “officers of the peace” instead of “law enforcement”, stop getting their budgets squeezed down so much they’re turning into highway robbers and forfeiture addicts to keep food on their tables.

It ISN’T the pot culture doing this, though it has contributed. This happens to all kinds of wonderful little formerly rural towns, by the kind of force I’m talking about here, and the natives and the locals who moved there for love of the place, are ALWAYS shoved out. All they did was whine while it was happening to them, when they COULD have stopped it.

This happened to Marin sixty-five years ago. It happened to Sonoma forty-five years ago. It happened to Mendocino, most of it, twenty-five years ago. It’s Humboldt’s turn now, and before you decide this isn’t so bad, look into the horrific environmental atrocities, the species extinctified or moved away, by that action in those counties… AND the cost of living there.

You want the law to chase them out, but you want the law to ignore the millions locals make on grows… And that money and industrial size is why they are here. If you don’t grow then you sell toys to growers. If you don’t do either, you are on the street.

I bet 90% of these millionaire grower’s parents were filthy freaky hippies moving here in droves decades ago. I bet the original loggers and ranchers reacted the same way to those bums. Now you’re a local, and you’ve got yours, and it’s “who are these new bums.” You’d like to pull up the ladder and talk about how gross and lazy they are while our black market lifestyle is driving up the price of groceries and housing.

There’s trashing the environment with their poop and food wrappers?

Who is draining the creeks dry, cutting shitty roads, clearing trees and making flats and ponds, pumping what’s left of the lukewarm river full of fertilizer runoff (then complaining about algea), driving miles to town daily in a huge truck to refill 24 hour diesel generators, burning tons of coal with thousand dollar power bills, importing a billion tons of soil yearly, abandoning pipes and pots and fencing anywhere… it’s not the hippies on the sidewalk.

They are here because of the insane grows supporting them. We grew up in a gold rush town folks. When the bubble bursts, hope you’ve got enough saved to find a job in Garberville! There will be nothing but motels and gaatations once the savings run out and the millionaires try to sell their mountain mansions.

NOT hypocrisy whatsoever. The “law” as you put it is here to SERVE the community, and a community that wants to grow LEGAL pot AND keep loitering mobs of transients off the public space and private property has EVERY right to expect it from the people they pay to help keep the peace, provide the muscle that is often necessary. And, the fact that this same sheriff seems to be avoiding the main environmental decimator growers nobody wants in Humboldt either has NOTHING to do with “blind hypocrites” ANYWHERE. That would be more due to fear of murdered cops and/or payoffs to keep away from them and/or a mixture of both… or… the ever dreaded outright incompetence.

QUIT turning it into a divide-and-rule polemic. QUIT defaulting to conditioned politics or personal ideas. If we want a decent environment for ourselves and our children again, we have to work together regardless of our politics or religions or lifestyles or opinions on pot or hippies or loggers or cops.

We need to help the Sheriff’s office over whatever impediment is letting these problems grow to epic proportions, OR replace them with ones who can and will handle them.

You can be CERTAIN that will happen when the hills fill up with PURE Silicon Valley retirees who want to get the property tax breaks “gentleman farming” accords them, and just hire local Hispanics to do the work. Until then, it behooves those millionaires to help the cops sit back and let the murdering and thieving and vagrancy and loitering in front of businesses and homelessness and wandering packs of abandoned pit bulls killing livestock and OUT of control hard drug addiction and prostitution getting worse by the day.

That LAW is what makes this county run. If we truly wanted LEGAL pot then huge corporations would manufacture it so cheaply and effectively we would all be driven out of the area. I’d like to see Humboldt when weed is $100 a pound. It’s going to be a retiree village. There are like 10 jobs in Garberville and 8 of them are minimum wage. Good luck finding the cash register jobs serving tourists for the thousands of residents year round.

I meant legal medical marijuana grows, not decriminalized completely or regulated legal completely. I’m always warning people about the corporate growers or the gentlemen farmers whose crops are bought by corporate growers, wishing to protect Mom and Pop growers. THAT is what Garberville wants the cops to leave alone, and what the People of California wants them to leave alone.

Now it’s up to us to keep the character of Humboldt, especially SoHum from falling to the big boyz who want to clear us all out and do their big corporate thing in peace. If we want home to stay home, to return the home we were working toward, we get our priorities straight TOGETHER and make it work to prevent all this and all that looming misery behind it.

And, even though I don’t live in Humboldt yet, I have been wanting to forever and will someday be able to afford it… if it’s still Humboldt and not Millionaire Central. So I have a stake in this, too, and it’s extremely apparent the “law” I was originally responding about, clearly, is not making Humboldt run well.

It’s being twisted and ignored and swept under the rug for some and allowed to squish others.

Don’t worry – in 10 years or so it’ll be just like it was here in the 1970’s – when cannabis is decriminalized on the federal level, prices will plummet as agribusiness takes over. Gone will be the “trimmigants”, gone will be the expensive businesses, gone will be the thousands of water trucks dirtying the air and destroying the roads…..I can hardly wait

Idk, Ive worked salmon creek, pilot ridge, larabee, salyer and near dinsmore. Ive never seen a tri migrant working other than a few clean looking europeans. Do growers in sohum actully hire these people, ever?

The market value of weed is in the toilet due to over production, so hardly anyone hires trimmers anymore. Add to that the Hmongs buying up grown land left and right all over Humboldt and Trinity and the Hmongs never hire trimmers. Do the math… The green culture isn’t about peace, love and buds anymore… It’s cutthroat profits and greed…. If you’re a politician you’ll probably do great as a grower because you born with the prerequisite to win at dog eat dog lol.

They also use 1970 series $100 bills, prolly stolen when the US was defeated in Vietnam.
I’d take Hmong over tweeker any time. They are good fighters and can live in the mountains, hence Hayfork being renamed Hmongfork.

This has been a great discussion with many valid points from all sides. I agree with nines that we must work together on this issue and action speaks louder than words sooo perhaps we should commend Tara and Melissa Sutherland for taking the first step in solving this problem. Working together and letting these transients know that they need to be respectful… not blocking access to business entrances, smoking along the sidewalk and using it for their ashtray and worst of all camping out and leaving all their trash for someone else to have to clean up. We are simply asking for common decency and acting like you want to be a contributing part of this community.

Thanks, and I am very pleased those ladies are going out there to show the community that action is not out of the question. I am, though, worried they will not get enough help and certainly those street people know 100% that the community doesn’t like their disrespect. They don’t need to be told, but they have been told a thousand times in a thousand different ways, and everybody’s made miserable by it.

So, much as I think Tara and Melissa are WONDERFUL people, it’s not enough to solve the problem. It MIGHT, if they can keep it up without bigger problems, at least make the kids feel safer getting to the school bus and back, BUT having to be guarded to feel safe isn’t a nice way to grow up either.

The Sheriff’s office just got money to help with this, no? Why aren’t those vagrants-on-purpose being cleared off the streets and parking lots? And why aren’t genuinely homeless people who need the help and services being taken care of? All kinds of cities and counties have found that providing housing and food stamps and medical coverage for homeless people is RADICALLY cheaper than all the costs of emergencies and shelters and the crimes against them and the money the businesses lose because the homeless have nowhere else to be?

It’s been done. It works. But, obviously, special interests are preventing such action in Humboldt County.

What ever happened with the guy who got beat up and later died not to far back. down town garb e surprised if it does happen again it’s like the wild west down there born in garb 55 yrs ago ,and I can’t stand to drive into to my own home town

It’s extremely difficult to incorporate as a town or city in Humboldt County. You’d have to show a net-zero loss in tax revenue for the county while at the same time raising new taxes for your own police and fire departments. Incorporation is the only way we can ever get proper ordinances to deal with the problems we have in SoHum. The Board of Supervisors don’t care enough to do anything, the Measure Z funds we were promised won’t be used to do anything about it, and Sheriff Downey doesn’t care either…not sure if it’s true but I’ve heard it said that Sheriff Downey once commented that the people in SoHum prefer lawlessness and therfore we should just suck it up in reference to all the transients…sure pissed me off when I heard that.

Again, daily sweeps of all the known illegal camping areas until the transients get it that they’re not welcome will go a long way in solving this problem. After a while it would shift to every other day, then weekly until they realize they need to move on.

So nobody told these scumbags to just show up here in our town, they are scummy and there’s no way they’ll ev er get picked up, the euros got it figured out,… clean and respectable, here to work and not addicted to meth or crack unlike our native visitors,…
Round up the scum beat down at the county line and 86 them from humboldt for life

I think the best you can do is a homeowners’ association and/or a business association, and they should be calling the Sheriff individually and severally every day until the pressure is SO great he starts doing his job.

…

Ooooo, and if he STILL won’t, instead of trying to incorporate towns, get all the villages together to incorporate as another COUNTY. County of Southern Humboldt can then pay their money to each other and make the ordinances to keep the transients from making their messes AND set it up to treat the REAL SoHum needy people right… AND the environment.

Maybe they won’t miss your tax money and self-determination is yours again. Or maybe they would and so would start acting right to keep you.

The new county line could be on the southern border of incorporated Eureka and run due east. I bet almost everyone south of that border would vote for it. And just about everyone south of that border probably also knows who they’d vastly prefer to be Sheriff and Board of Supervisors for SoHum County.

I agree most of tax money comes from eureka and north and should stay there lets gets this ball rolling so the money can be used where its most needed spreading Humboldt money in the rural areas is stupid they have there’s in so hum and they have there’s in nor-hum draw a line and fend for yourself make sure you plan a nice big so-hum co. jail so they don’t get dropped off in another co.

Well, obviously, that tax money isn’t going much south of Eureka right now, and I think all of the counties with this problem are driving them to Sacramento… where they’re equipped to handle the situation better. This new hobo culture the millennials have started isn’t about wanting jobs that do not exist. It’s about attitude, about resentment, and a way to party together anywhere they damn please, without having to take the guff from their hometowns for it.

According to the powers that be, they’re just supposed to die or join the military or go to jail. I want them to have decent lives, but they are free to choose. They are NOT free to turn other people’s communities into dangerous dumps and run good people out of their small businesses and good families out of their communities.

That’s what we have Sheriffs for and why did you guys vote to pay more taxes to cover this need if you’re just going to sit back and not cover it anyway? Let some dedicated ladies with lives and kids try to go out and plead with the bums for decency when the bums aren’t there to be decent?

They’re there to do what they’re doing. That’s the POINT.

If it were up to me, and it’s not — I’m just a concerned buttinski in Smith River who wants to end up in So Hum — I’d boot Ray’s out of town and use that for a jail and build a co-op supermarket where the locals can at least share in the profits from all those outrageously priced groceries… that would probably STILL be less than Ray’s charges.

The growers, who are not taxed, have brought your problems to your area. Despite what the government is telling you, the value of the dollar has been declining due to quantitative easing, that a fancy word for they have been pumping billions of dollars into the economy every month since Obama has been elected to lower interest rates and stimulate the economy. The money is the interest free and the fed loans to the 1% who invest in the stock market (why its so high)or to the Banksters loan to us chumps. They cannot stop doing this because when they do, interest rates go up, what do you think the interest payment is on a trillion $ is? The clown in office has helped amassed several more trillion of more debt and climbing. I’m old and retired, you young idiots who don’t pay attention to whats really going on and vote for the same clowns will be paying my social security and debt payments. Thank you

I’m old, too, just not ancient kind of old, but we’ve been paying just like the kids will be paying our entire adult lives already. And I was talking about property taxes and assuming that it won’t be more than a year or two before the growers will be taxed. The fee structures for permitting their water use are already being discussed.

And what they’re doing with the quantitative easing thing is adding zeroes on computers and disappearing zeroes elsewhere. Plus, there is an entirely black system of finance, blacker than Congress ever sees, that finances way more than we know… but it’s many trillions of undeclared income they can use however they want or need. A crash would sic the general population on them. They don’t want it.

Just don’t try becoming a big time heroin or cocaine dealer and you should be okay, but my point is that they can also throw into the economic hocus pocus whatever amount from this entirely black budget when and if their plans go south on them.

No runaway inflation or crash is contemplated. A certain financial wizard I know calls it “the slow burn” or “slow burning” and every bit as devastating, it keeps everything barely afloat while slowly squeezing marginally situated people out of the economy completely.

It’s been explained to me a few times and it’s too complicated for me to put here or even to keep straight enough in my own head to come out right if I did, but barring some catastrophe to their slow burning, the crash will not come. It will have been something more like a squish and people won’t know it happened until it’s over.

And I don’t even want to sound a little like I’m defending any of the US presidents since that blackest day in 1963, but they don’t have any say in this stuff. They do what they’re told. Think of them as spokesmodels… and obedient to the powers that let them be in their position.

This does filter all the way down to the local level… think immediately OR’d heroin dealers… so I try to encourage everyone to start thinking of better ways to structure our communities and to foster the return of gratitude and reverence for the people around us by working together despite ideological differences to turn home back into home, to be each other’s safety nets and protection, but not get to the point where our tolerance for each other turns into our demise.

My dream community tolerates each other’s differences and welcomes people in, BUT does not tolerate slick and greedy psychopaths running things, ruining quality of life and environment, OR influxes of grubby brats with nasty attitudes flooding the streets, doing the same.

Working outside of the federal reserve system is a good start, not partaking in slavery and coercion is another.

People who fall through the cracks have nowhere to land, it’s why so many take government jobs. The schools bred out self reliance and all people know is to take from others by force, so they work in government jobs and steal from their communities.

You know I came to Humboldt homeless without a pot to piss in. The first thing I did was got my butt into a shelter, then went down to social services and got an EBT card (they give EBT to everyone… HELLO!!!) I then did what I was told to do and and became a functioning part of society. I never once made a sign asking for bullshit or begged for food money. In Humboldt free food and clothes are about the easiest things to get. So when I see this signs asking for food money I know they’re full of shit, it’s drugs or alcohol they actually looking to buy. Most of the shelters wont accept people who are drinking and or doing drugs. So suck it up cupcake, you’re not on a freaking vacation and if you do have an AOD problem, get help like i did. I’ll be 4 years sober on Jan 1 and guess what MF?? I’m a raging alcoholic, but while i was homeless I didn’t drink cuz I liked having a warm place to sleep more than I wanted booze. I was also well over 40 and homeless, so get over your whinny ass you lamer 20 year olds…. Do the foot work to have a better life.

Allow me to add that there are those who are mentally ill, legitimately disabled people etc and need help. What I said was in no way directed to those who have real problems. But these 20 year old kids are a bunch of healthy bums who need to get jobs.

In another city far from here… a young man was homeless and passed out his hand written resume… yard work, manual labor, etc…. to everyone who passed him. He was working the next day and had a home soon after. He was trying to and seceded to change his situation.

The trimmigrant now just seems different they were less hard hard drugs 15 years ago and there was way less homeless 15 years ago. It’s why I bought a house in mendocino county the cops here keep a lid on the trimmigrants run em off or catch them with hard drugs. Try shitting on the sidewalk in Laytonville mendo sheriff’s don’t look the other way and there’s a lot of them.

My guess is your dumb group did nothing since it being November 1st and rain just started (hence why no one is outside) My guess is the Sutherlands don’t live in town near any of these people and my third guess is these girl steam will runout

Chico, ca needs desperate help ASAP too. We are looking for a solution to better our town. As I type this, there are countless transient/homeless in downtown Chico’s City Plaza, some naked, some sleeping, some with stolen property, yelling, throwing trash, harassing people and causing many problems. We need HELP. WE NEED SOLUTION. WE NEED TO PUT AN END TO THIS!

Where did the LOPS go? [edit] I thought it was funny the other day, there were 30 people sitting out front of the book store that [edit]got Paul evicted from. Slap my leg…you can’t kill Kathy’s spirit..

Sorry I’m so mean but I worked for
50 plus years and now retired with
A good income Thank God! It bothers
Me that our local officials won’t take
The Vagrants down to their own little
Park away from this nice beach community. My house payments are
High and not paying to live in a park
Next to the beach is illegal and wrong
I am totally frustrated that nothing
Is being done. All bleeding hearts
Need not respond. He that does
Not work does not eat or spong off
Us.

My husband and I were forced to travel from Novato via Hwy 1 instead of 101 today because of the fires in Sonoma and Napa Co. and were dismayed to drive all that way…quite harrying…hwy 1 I mean, only to be forced to come to Garberville to find a motel that would accept our dog. We should have stayed in Mendocino…but he was determined to get closer to 101. Anyway, we went to Ray’s for food. OMG. What the Heck! Does Garberville even have a police department? There was a van on the sidewalk handing out beers like it’s a party. Really?
We’re so tired. We drove 9 hours today because we have a cabin rented in Crescent City tomorrow only to come into this cute looking little town. Then we got a room and went to the store. WHAT A SHOCK! THEN THERE WAS A FIGHT IN THE PARKING LOT WHILE WE WERE CHECKING OUT!.
C’mon!